The X-Men are the heroes in a Marvel Comics franchise of the same name.

Canon

Protecting a world that hates and fears them

The X-Men are a superhero group formed by Charles Xavier in order to a) teach mutants how to use their abilities, b) protect humans from evil mutants, c) protect mutants from evil humans. In practice, they mostly end up just doing b), protecting a world that fears and hates them.

Stan Lee initially hit on "mutation" as a solution to the problems of providing heroes with individual origin stories, so while the X-Men started off as just five mutant teenagers (Cyclops, Marvel Girl (later Phoenix), Beast, Iceman, & Angel), the cast grew. And then grew some more. "Cast of thousands" now accurately describes the franchise. The glossary at the fansite, Uncanny X-Men.net is currently at close to two thousand mutants.

Fandom

sections about non-fic fans, something about pre-internet fanfic, something about current fanfic Does anyone remember some comments on OTL along the lines of "girls and their romance stories"? Find meta or timeline on decline of the fandom.

Common Themes and Trends

As with the source canon, X-Men fanwriters write crossovers with other Marvel teams. Because of the great number of characters, some fans specialize in certain X-teams. There are specific archives and communities for Excalibur, Generation X, and X-Force.

While there were certainly one-shots and short fics, many authors favoured multi-chapter, plot-driven fics. As fanwriter Alicia McKenzie recalls, "Back in the fall of 1997, when I first began writing fan fiction, the standard 'format', as least as far as I saw, seemed to be the multi-part epic." [1]

Terminology

Original Characters

X-Men fandom was very accepting of original characters, many of whom gained their own fan followings and were rarely accused of being Mary Sues. The CBFFA had an award for best original character, which may give some indication of how widely accepted OCs were in the fandom. Original characters were also widely seen in Subreality Cafe, where they rubbed elbows with their writers and their canonical counterparts. While they rarely interacted directly with canonical characters, The Common People Project was devoted to writing about the "regular" citizens of the Marvel Universe; stories written for the project were almost always original characters. The wide acceptance of original characters may in part be explained by the nature of the canon: when canon itself regularly introduces beautiful new characters with superpowers and a tragic past, how could fan writers be criticized for doing the same?

Original characters were most often introduced as a new member of the team (or one of the X-Men's various spinoff teams). While an OC might find a lover among the X-Men, original characters weren't always written into a romance. Sometimes an OC was a child or another relative of one of the X-Men. Children could be introduced through means of an alternate universe, time travel, cloning, or other plot devices.

Pairings

The X-Men fandom was mainly focused on gen and het, with slash later becoming bigger.

Slash and Femslash

Early slashpairings are Iceman/Gambit and Remy/Logan. GLAMBeau/Devo - influential early slash writer, first Iceman/Gambit story (pretty sure). Mooks also made slash (Remy/Bobby) more popular? Northstar/Iceman more popular now (thank you, Austin). X-Men Slash Central gives a fairly comprehensive picture of slash fandom at the time. Bobby Drake fairly commonly thought of as closeted. Very little femslash, despite the possibilities (Tilmen Stieve). There was a femslash archive, which must now be hunted down. . . and here; affiliated with revolution-f mailing list on Yahoo!Groups.

There were dedicated slash spaces, just like there were dedicated NC-17 spaces. By the late 90s this was changing, though - writers like Kaylee who wrote gennish slash did a lot to blur the boundaries. [2]

Cosplays

Cosplaying for different X-Men characters is extremely popular - mostly featured on Deviantart. Most of the costumes are based off the characters infamous costumes such as Jean Grey's Phoenix costume[1] or her 90s costume[2] or Rogue's 90s costume[3]. Even X-Men villains get cosplayed as well - Mystique[4]

RPGS

Mailing Lists & Usenet

In the '90s/early 00s the two primary mailing lists were Untold-l and Outside The Lines. Untold-l died an inglorious death in an avalanche of bouncing emails shortly after the owner and listserve changed. Susan "Neon Nurse" Crites established Outside The Lines (OTL) as an alternative to the dying Untold mailing list. [3] Outside the Lines was open to all comic-based fanfic, although X-titles dominated, much as they had on Untold. Various character and pairing specific lists also existed. Southern Comfort, Gambit Guild, and Blue Believers were early character focused mailing lists. The number of mailing lists grew when Yahoo!Groups made creating and maintaining mailing lists easier.

Archives

One of the earliest X-Men archives belonged to Hawk, who archived every fic posted to the usenet group, regardless of quality. A handful of large archives were established after Hawk's archive went down. While these archives may have been the biggest and most recognizable, many fans maintained smaller archives of their own fanfic, or fics by authors they enjoyed on sites such as Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod, and Fortunecity. Kielle's Comic Fan-Fiction Authors' Network (CFAN), was a hub of activity for comics fans of all titles and companies. CFAN Full (If Brief) Page Listing demonstrates the breadth of fannish activity surrounding comics fandom at that time.

Awards

The CBFFAs were an annual fanfic award; while there were categories for DC and Wildstorm/Image fics, the primary focus was on the various X-titles. The CBFFAs were hosted by CFAN, and ran from 1998 to 2002.

Fanzines

Fan Pages

Fan pages were an important part of the X-Men fandom. Various websites devoted to collecting information about specific teams and characters existed on sites such as Geocities. With the number of alternate universes and retcons that X-Men fans had to contend with, such sources of information could be quite valuable.

Resources

Uncanny X-Men dot Net - The definitive X-Men website, now running for eight years. They cover upcoming, current and back issue titles with a smart and thorough style. Their "Spotlight On" posts cover characters, their backstories, significant issues, and costume.